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Disgusting and embarrassing.
Disgusting and embarrassing. To let it go on this long. And the Walsh and Baker administrations are continuing to herd the homeless / addicted / mentally ill like livestock to other sections of Boston and the Commonweath other than Methadone Mile to make room for more development and "affordable" housing. No wonder the overdose and other methods of suicide are rampant.
It's not for development
They've never cared about affordable housing. It takes political will to spend a lot of money on a bridge which would only get used by people who aren't their supporters and are only in the news for negative things.
Much easier to just push people around and hope they go away on their own. It's like the kid who doesn't want to get a dustpan so he just sweeps the dirt pile around the room evenly and hopes no one notices.
If Boston's developers and donors put a concerted effort into lobbying for the bridge, it would get funded. Rampant addiction isn't hurting development enough for the big wigs to care.
Funded
in advance of what would be the next Seaport District. Just more exclusive and with a really cool drawbridge to keep the unwashed out.
Friggin' Tragic
When you see it all together like that. Thanks for sharing this story.
So why aren't they using boats
to get everyone to Long Island until a bridge is built?? There is a crisis going on and the powers that be are just shrugging their shoulders.
We've gone over that before
Search the archives.
Out of sight out of mind
I'm convinced most of the people who claim they care so much about the homeless, mentally ill, addicts really care mostly about how seeing them every day downtown and in few other areas ruins their mood and day. They may not say it, but most would have no problem of they were rounded up and put in concentration-thlype camps in our of the way rural areas.
and on that very same night...
a bottle of '28 Krug was popped in a certain developers household
for they too would have a compound to call their very own
yes, it would take some time but the purchasing of politicians was perhaps the wisest move in the goal of watching the grandkids and great-grandkids frolic like nouveau riche bunnies among the manicured lawn that once cared for the sick and dying
but no more
for now a new king has staked his claim and from this point forward we shall call this soon to be developed stretch of land....Fish Island
Squantum Swampy
5 years ago the new Mayor closed the bridge with nearly no notice and no real plans for the thousands (clients and staff members) affected within 48 hrs. of the resignation of ED Ferrer from the Boston Public Health Commission, which ran the Long Island recovery campus. Ferrer did not back the new Mayor. The new Mayor was a former State Rep. who received tons of donations from Squantum residents with the (unspoken?) agreement to close the bridge. Swampy. #stilllongisland.#bostonwarm.
This truly is an outrage.
This city has seen incredible high-end development for nearly a decade, and five years later we still haven't solved this problem. The money is there. Leadership is lacking. A city flush that should be flush with cash is content to flush a large and growing at-risk population down the drain.
If and when there is a new bridge, I can only imagine how the facilities on the island have been allowed to deteriorate over a half-decade of disuse.
also rehabbed
after they had been rehabbed just prior to the decision to close the bridge!!! you cant make this stuff up.
Not true, bandaids at best
Without getting into the issue of the bridge, people should realize that the facilities on Long Island are decrepit. I know this because I used to take people there in an ambulance right up until the bridge was condemned. However there is a taxpayer funded public facility built during the Menino years that appears to have never been used
SQUANTUM LEAP
You wake up on a strange couch, your head is pounding, you hear Pink Floyd playing in another room and you have to figure out how to get off H again.
Why has everyone decided that
Why has everyone decided that the island is the best place to house homeless people, and that the bridge isn't neighb rebuilt just because of discrimination?
Wouldn't homeless people be served better by shelters in a more convenient location? Isn't the island a great example of sweeping the homeless out of public view? And couldn't the money saved by not rebuilding the bridge, and not running shuttle buses a really long way back and forth every day, pay for a whole lot of social services?
Did the City ever have a
Did the City ever have a mandate to care for the homeless and addicted of Massachussettes and greater New England? It is awful what has happened, it is awful what the population experiencing homelessness and addiction are enduring, but it is so easy to point fingers and demand somebody fix it. You can't end poverty, mentally illness and trauma with a bridge. The system is flooded with individuals experiencing acute co morbidities. Most people who are homeless in Boston were never Boston Residents but nobody is blaming the Mayors of Lowell and Chicopee. It is not within Mayor Walsh's power, even if you think he is a superhero, to end poverty, addiction, homelessness, and stigma in Boston New England or anywhere. That bridge swayed in the wind in the 80's when he was kid.